


new endings, old beginnings

by thorkidumpster



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bargaining, Blood and Gore, Death, Gen, Helheimr | Hel (Realm), Kid Loki, M/M, Old Souls, Pagan Gods, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Thor Needs a Hug, Unworthy Thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 09:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11354337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thorkidumpster/pseuds/thorkidumpster
Summary: after loki's death on svartalfheim, thor vows to do all he can to bring his brother back -- even if that requires trudging into hel itself.





	1. new endings

**Author's Note:**

> so, one of the (many, many) things about thor: tdw that hacked me off was how thor just... left loki's body behind. yo fiddly ho, we're part of a gang of superheros that could easily take over now that the fight's moved on to midgard so you can mourn your dead brother but w/e. also -- the destruction of asgard is seriously downplayed. like, that kind of fighter battle? a ship literally crashing into the palace? dude, the causalities must have been astronomical.
> 
> i'm not kidding about that gore tag; there's graphic depictions of death, because that's another thing that frustrates me about fantasy movies showing heroes die a good death.
> 
> no one dies well.

* * *

 

No one dies well.

As a child, Thor grew strong on the stories of men giving their lives, vigilant and brave, on the battlefield—he imagined their proud heads bowed, the tender kiss on the brow bestowed by the Valkyrie as she lifts his soul to Valhalla.

There was never much blood in the stories, the tapestries. A few splashes of scarlet thread, woven into neat patterns under a beautiful body.

But no one dies well.

The blood flies in the air and squishes under boots. It sinks into the cracks of his skin, mixing steadily with his until Thor's sure he has not a drop of his own blood remaining—he is made of every fallen friend and foe and unknown man on every battlefield.

Brains fall out easily, leaking from skulls cracked under Mjolnir's heavy weight. Thor had only been a boy the first time he killed a man in such a way, and the grey-pink chunks flew into his mouth. He fell to his knees, gagging, and vomited right on his enemy's corpse. Afterwards, he vowed never to end another's life as such.

Until he watched a beast die after caving in its chest cavity.

It took hours; the monster screaming in awful pain, blood oozing, breath wheezing, and something black bubbling out its lips.

Thor has never fancied a cutting weapon, but he has seen the other's—Sif, Fandral, Hogun, Loki—disembowel enough to know that blue, bloated intestines slid from bodies with terrifying ease, until Thor choked from the smell of it.

No.

No one dies well.

Not even a son of Odin.

Thor cradles the limp form of his brother and sobs, the skies ripping apart in his agony. All the things he had never wanted to see—parts of his brother that should not be exposed to anyone—dribble out steadily. The stab pierced intestine, and the air already stinks of shit.

At least his—at least Loki died quickly, the poison burning ash through his veins.

Marble turns to slate.

Eyes go dull.

Muscles slacken.

Thor tucks his cloak over his brother as his trousers become dark with piss.

Because no one dies well.

“Thor...” Jane whispers. “We have to go.”

Thor doesn't turn his head. He traces the lines on Loki's smooth face with his thumb, leaving a smear of Svartalfheim’s black dirt. “Leave without me. You have all you need. Contact... contact the Avengers. My bro—” _my brothers,_ he means to say, but it chokes him. The only brother he ever had lays in his arms, cooling and limp. “My comrades will rush to aid you.”

“Thor—”

“Please.”

It hangs like a broken thing in the air. Torn open and hollow.

Jane touches his shoulder, her hand warm and alive. “Take... take care of him.” She hesitates, then kneels beside Thor. “Thank you, Loki. I hope you find peace.”

Thor howls and lightning arches across the dark sky.

It is no easy feat, carrying a body.

But he manages.

He calls for Heimdall, because it is time for Loki of Asgard to return home.

The power of the Bifrost nearly tears them apart, but Thor holds Loki all the tighter because his little brother already knows the void of space, the dead edges of the galaxy, the hollow of the black space around the stars; Thor will not consign his body to that nether.

Heimdall says not a word. His golden eyes drop from the red bundle in Thor's arms to the carved floor of the Observatory.

And Thor walks. He cannot ride without letting go of Loki, nor can he fly with Mjolnir and hold Loki steady.

So Thor places one foot in front of the other. And the other. And the other.

The palaces takes hours to reach on foot.

People gather, drawn by murmurs of Thor's slow return. They watch with empty eyes. There are too many to mourn—brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, friends and enemies—to offer a convicted prisoner a proper farewell.

Loki's black hair flutters in the breeze, stark against the red cloak.

The palace of Asgard looms, a silent sentinel to the city's grief. The palace has seen blood before; has bathed in war and death since it was little more than a longhouse covered in furs. It offers no mercy, and only the most fleeting of comfort.

There was another time Thor carried Loki back home—when they were boys, off on some foolish adventure and Loki was struck down by their prey. The injury was minor, two broken ankles, and Loki cursed Thor's ears off as he was led through the streets, carted in his brother's arms like a bride to her husband.

Thor tries to imagine that's the reason he holds Loki's body aloft, but the silence rings.

No one moves to stop him; they might as well be statues, staring through marble. They turn back to their work, clearing rubble and pulling the dead from under crushing stone. In the distance, an infant wails, lusty and demanding, and Thor looks at the bundle in his arms and imagines Loki, reborn.

Then he chides himself for the foolish notion.

Loki would have laughed, he thinks. It hovers on the edges of his mind, simultaneously childish and sinister.

Odin meets him in the ruins of the Great Hall, and the tight anger melts from his mouth as he lays eye on Loki's quiet face. Something crumbles in him, a pillar, and Odin shakes from the inside. “He...”

Thor says nothing. He's tired, arms aching from the dead weight of his brother's body.

With the gravitas of a much older man, a man who has seen worlds born and burn, Odin turns and beckons his son onwards. “The Healing Chambers are full,” he says. “His bedroom will have to suffice.”

Thor's feet follow the same, familiar path they have carved for centuries—the winding turns of the inner palace giving way to the private housings, where Loki's own hall was forged from gold by his magic when he reached manhood. He has not been in these chambers since what he has come to term as his brother's Fall. Fall from grace, Fall into madness, Fall away from him.

His father opens the huge doors by hand, needing to preserve the trickle of magic he has left for rebuilding Asgard. If Thor needed any more confirmation—if the presence in his own arms had not seeped into his mind—all hope of Loki's tricks are cast aside at how easily his inner home bares itself for outsiders.

Thor has not been able to open those doors on his own for so long he barely remembers the feeling of the carved handles on his palms. A cruel, ironic joke that he been deemed unworthy of his brother on the day he lifted Mjolnir.

“I mustn't let everything go to your head,” his brother had sniped, and the doors never parted for him again.

Thor pays no mind to the room, only trudges foward, those last few steps feeling like miles upon miles, until he lays Loki's body on the soft down bed.

“I shall fetch Eir,” Odin's voice cracks. “To prepare him.”

“No,” Thor responds. “Let her Heal. I shall tend him.”

His father touches his shoulder, the grip light where it used to be strong, and bitterly, Thor thinks that very soon he shall be utterly alone. “You do not have to.”

But he does. He does. He does.

“We have a body, at least. For the pyre.”

Thor inclines his head. “Go, Father. There's more to be done. Send aid to Midgard, and I shall return there myself after... after I am done.”

“There will be no need.”

There's meaning in those words, a promise, but Thor just brushes back a strand of hair from Loki's face. With diligence, Thor peels back the layers of armor that cover his brother's body—vambraces fall open, and the overcoat, cut away by one of Loki's own daggers. He seeks not to preserve these reminders, for his brother has plenty of clothes to be burned in.

Loki's nudity comes far easier than it ever did before, but he has no resemblance to his former self. His belly is a ruin of bloated, leaking intestine, the skin black with whatever foul poison coated the blade. It creeps up his veins, a haunting color on the ashen hue, having spread in a horrifying few seconds.

Thor fetches a cloth and washbin of water from Loki's bathroom, and when he returns, scented herbs and fine stitching are laying next to Loki's body, along with jars of pale cream to color what has been lost.

The herbs, he casts aside. The cream, he pours on the ground. Armed with a warm cloth, Thor gently removes the dirt and grime from Loki's face, from the trappings of his hair. He works with diligence, wiping and cleaning, lifting Loki's arms, his legs, washing the piss and shit from his groin and the blood from his wound.

That Thor binds with the needle and thread, carefully, with precise loops that would make his mother proud, had they been on cloth and not stomach. The organs should be removed, but Thor has no intention of doing so—Loki will not be stuffed for the crowd.

No, Loki will need those again.

Finally, propping Loki's torso against his own chest like a lover's embrace, Thor finally cries, and he holds his wet, naked, dead brother as the sky weeps with him.

“Come back to me,” Thor breathes against Loki's cold lips. “And I might even forgive you for it.”

 _Might you?_ Loki's slack face seems to say. The candles cast taunting shadows; it looks as though life flickers under his skin and his eyes move about under the curtain of their black-fringed lids. _Might you, brother?_

But Loki's taunts are forever silent.

 

* * *

 


	2. old beginnings

* * *

 

 Once again, Odin forbade leaving the palace.

He passes the judgment down as he has several times over the course of Thor's long life, as though Thor has not shat all over those proclamations hundreds of times before. But Odin is too weak to enforce his law with anything but words; Thor can see the Sleep crawling over his father's frail frame, coming far sooner than it has ever before.

Soon, Thor thinks, he will be an orphan. Left alone in the world; no mother, no father, no brother...

But not for much longer. Loki waits in his old chambers, his body covered with a green blanket that he had once hidden under during thunderstorms or when their father was wrathful. Thor knows he has very little time.

Technically, Thor does not defy his father—Helheim is the realm of the dead, and is a part of every world that ever was and shall ever be, as persistent as shadow and as endless as time. Crossing that barrier of life and death is the most difficult part; it is a journey meant for those who are gone. But Loki has slipped through that flimsy veil and so shall Thor.

To pass into death requires a ritual and a prayer.

And sacrifice.

So Thor gathers to Loki's chambers all that the Death Queen might love. Diamonds that gleam rainbows, jewels empowered with spells of beauty, grace, and charm. The heart of an elder dragon that once roamed the darkness between realms. A book that contains the secret names of souls.

Two days pass as he amasses his tributes; two days of furtive sneaking, two days of the thick layer of incense to cover the faint hint of rot.

He wonders if the wealth and knowledge of Asgard will be enough. Surely it must—and yet, sentiment drives Thor to adding two crowns, one of horns and the other of feathers.

 _Sentiment..._  Loki sneers.

With shaking hands, he places his offerings before him. Black stains have spread on the Loki's shroud. Time trickles. Vain Loki would never forgive Thor if he allows his body to go to ruin.

“Hela, hear me. I entreat passage to your realm and offer you gifts befitting your station.”

Silence. Thor shifts his gaze around, searching for any hint that his plea had been answered.

“Hela,” he begins again. “I am Thor, Son of Odin, and Prince to the Golden Realm. I entreat passage to Helheim and offer you gifts as recompense.”

Thor holds his breath and waits. When there is nothing forthcoming, he releases the air in a gust.

“Hela—” Thor gags as his throat clamps closed, as though someone had him gripped by the neck. Wild, Thor swings his arms in front of himself, but there is only empty air. He thrashes harder, knocking over his offerings and ripping off the whisper of the past he had cloaked Loki in.

Loki's body is discolored, black and purple on his underside from the settling, rotting blood.

Thor wraps his hands around his own neck, desperately trying to pry off the nothing that is strangling him. But his vision edges in black and his eyeballs feel ready to burst from his skull. The last thing he sees is Loki's body, growing fat with death, lips shrunken back over his teeth in a grimace.

  
  


Thor awakens with a gasp of air. He lays at the foot of Loki's bed, but—Loki is not there. Thor jolts to his feet, truly and deeply afraid for the first time in his life. Not for others, as he had always been—afraid when his mother caught illness, afraid when Sif was crushed under a giant, afraid when he held his dying brother in his arms—no, Thor knows now what it is to fear for himself.

The world around him is desaturated, lined with grey, as though color could not possibly exist beyond the grave. Shadows flicker, twining in the corners of his eyes, but when Thor turns his head to look, they retreat.

“Welcome to Hel.”

All at once, the fear drains from Thor and is replaced by hope, love, warmth, all the goodness of life and what makes that life worth living. A glow radiates from his skin and Thor cannot help a smile.

It is Loki's voice.

Thor turns and, it is not trick, for Loki stands now before him, naked, but unaware of his nudity. Unashamed. Uncaring.

Cold.

There is no expression on his face.

Loki has never looked at him thus, as though his brother were a stranger. Even in the worst of times, Loki offered him hatred, rage, defiance, but never placid coolness. Loki could lie to the realms, but not to his brother.

“Loki?” Thor ventures. “Are you... are we...”

“Hela has sent me to retrieve you, Prince of Asgard. Follow.” With that, Loki turns and walks to the chamber door. It cracks open without touch, but instead of revealing the hallway into the main section of the royal rooms, there is...

Thor would call it a throne room, were there anything there to suggest a throne. Rather, it is a large space, round, circled by pebbled stone that, upon closer examination, are skulls, shrunken to the size of marbles.

Thor's breath would have caught, had he still needed to breathe.

In the center is a plain wooden chair, on which a woman is perched. Her clothes are grey, neither fine nor ragged, and her face is plain, neither young nor old. She exists between worlds, a harbinger that claims all and is nothing.

She watches him with eyes that echo the birth of stars.

Loki pads over to her and takes a standing place by her side. The woman gives his arm a pat with a boney hand.

“I am—”

“I know who you are.” Her voice is a whisper that sounds like drums in Thor's head. “You do not belong here, golden prince.”

Thor swallows back the wave of nausea that rises in him. “Thank you,” he says with a forced bow. “For hosting me, fair queen.”

“You think me fair?”

In truth—no. Hela is without distinction. Her face has a nose setting upon it, and lips, and brows, but there is no beauty to her. No ugliness. She simply exists.

So Thor glides over her question. “I bring you gifts.”

“You bring me worthlessness.”

“I—” Thor stammers. “I have brought the wealth of Asgard—jewels. An elder dragon's heart. A book of—”

Hela rises from her chair. “You cannot bribe death with pretty things, Thor.” She shakes her head. “I do not need the heart of a dragon; I claim its very essence. I do not need a book with the names of souls; I know them all. I do not need the crowns of two foolish boys; I own one and will own the other in time.”

Thor stares at her, uncomprehending. “Then why... why did you allow me here?”

“Because you were unexpected.” Hela places her hand on Loki's tall shoulder. “Why your brother and not your mother? Why not plead for an extension to your mortal woman's life? Why Loki—traitor, liar, thief?”

“I love him.”

“You love the others.”

Oh, but Thor wishes for his brother's quick tongue. Loki would have charmed Hela into a giggling girl, no doubt, and brought a pink blush to her otherwise colorless cheeks. But Thor is not Loki, so he settles for the bluntness that acts as a counterweight to balance his brother's fickle nature. “It is not my place to plead anything on behalf of Jane's soul, and my mother died with honor. She deserves rest.”

Hela dips her head. “I knew Frigga. I loved her, as all did. She rests in ease.”

Thor swallows around the lump in his throat. Tears burn and Thor lets them fall without shame; his mother is at peace.

“But Loki died with honor, as well,” Hela continues. “You say it is not your place to beseech on behalf of another's soul, and yet...”

“I love him,” Thor says again. “You cannot tear the moon from the sky and expect the sun not to mourn.”

“I tore nothing,” Hela says. “I stole nothing. I expect... nothing. People love. People die. I have only released souls once, but never twice.”

“I do not...”

Loki turns his cheek to look upon Hela. He holds no expression. She touches him again, as if to reassure herself that he remains by her side. “Loki has bargained once for his soul before, Thor, son of Odin. He came to me, covered in the light of stars after having thrown himself from the world of gods, frozen, and offered me his agonized heart. I accepted, and breathed life back into him. I confess... to having been flattered.”

Somewhere a part of Thor wants to laugh, laugh until he cries, because of course Loki could charm Death Herself.

“Loki gave me his heart, Thor. What have you to offer worth more?”

Thor gazes on his brother's face. “There is nothing worth more.”

“So you acknowledge my reasoning.”

“But there is something, perhaps, equal.”

Even the murky depths of Helheim cannot part Mjolnir from him. She falls from the endless black above and flies to his hand. Loki offered Hela a part of himself; he tore the bleeding heart from his chest. So Thor shall offer a part of himself, as well.

Thor kneels and places Mjolnir at Hela's feet.

There is an eternity without sound, but then Hela bends and lifts the hammer with no struggle. He has given her a part of his soul, and his soul responds to his wishes.

She traces the knotted pattern on Mjolnir's face. “You do not know...” Hela holds out the hammer, testing its heft, but her pose is not one of aggression; she does not raise the hammer as though to smash it upon a skull. “Life and death. Destruction and creation.”

Thor bites his tongue and waits.

Hela sighs. She cups Loki's cheek and stands on her toes to kiss his mouth—with a sound like rushing water, Loki begins to melt away, little shreds of his soul flickering away from his feet up, until Hela is left kissing the space he once stood in. Then she turns her back to Thor and returns to her chair, dropping Mjolnir to rest by her side, well within reach.

“I accept your offering, Thor Odinson,” she says, bitter. Her voice is laced with anger, and... hurt. “Begone from my realm and pray you die a hero's death.”

Before Thor can respond, she waves her arm and he collapses in on himself, screaming. The door behind him clatters open and Thor is sucked from her throne room into the black hole on the other side.

 

 

 

When Thor is sure that the ground under him is once again solid, he waits. He expects to hear... something. Loki's voice, perhaps, or him gasping as air is forced into his lungs. But there is no sound except for his own breathing.

Thor cracks open his eyes.

Again, he is laid at the foot of Loki's bed.

But it is occupied.

Loki's corpse remains unchanged, exposed until Thor tucks the blankets back over him.

Had... had he dreamed that?

Thor flexes his fist, then reaches out to summon Mjolnir.

She does not answer and Thor tears apart, howling in grief that he has been tricked, tricked! And all that he loves has been stolen from him, taken with greedy, cruel hands and never to return.

A servant rushes in at the sound of Thor's screams and swears at the stench.

Outside, the sky rolls with clouds blacker than Hela's cold heart and the sky rips open in a storm the likes of which Asgard has never seen.

 

 

 

Thunder rumbles in the sky. Maria glances up, an old thread of childhood fear zinging through her. She cradles her fat, round belly, murmuring softly to the child kicking from its mother's distress. They'll be born soon, she thinks—they sit low in her stomach and she is sure they're already turned head down.

Another loud clap from the gods above and Maria groans as a spasm clenches around her lower abdomen. There is a hospital only a short distance away, but Maria is too afraid to go. She has heard stories of babies being taken from their mothers, because the mothers were deemed to be unfit to raise them.

She should have fled Paris when she had the chance.

But there is a shelter that she has stayed in before—a place for women without a home, with scars on their faces and pain in their hearts; a place that did not bat an eye when girls ten months gone showed up on their doorstep.

In the end, it does not matter.

She delivers a boy after eighteen agonizing hours of labor, a boy with wispy black hair and a squashed face she named Serrure. Maria brings him to her breast, kisses his bloody forehead, and dies.

The thunderstorm did not break during her labor, not even for a moment.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> serrure ("lock") is the name kid loki has before thor finds him and helps him basically like... remember who he is. so just a little nudge-nudge there.
> 
> thank you to the people that helped me beta this hunk'o'junk, i appreciate it.
> 
> if you enjoyed my writing, you should check out my tumblr @ thorkidumpster.tumblr.com. i'm also working on a drabble a day for 30 days, so check those out; they're generally way happier than this. they'll get put on ao3 in 3 days or so, and updated every 10 until the 30 days are up.


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